Life can feel like a series of high wire trapeze swings. Imagine yourself either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments at a time hurtling through space in between the trapeze bars.
Most of the time we are tightly hanging on to our trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. These are the behaviour that you call ‘me’. This is your identity. It carries you along at a certain steady rate of swing and you have the feeling that you’re in control of your life. You know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers.
But, every now and again as you’re merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along, you look out ahead into the distance, and what do you see? You see another trapeze bar swinging towards you. Another opportunity – may be a shift in your relationship, a change in your business structure or a new direction in your health regime.
This new trapeze bar is empty and you know that this bar is for you.
It is your next step, of growth, of aliveness coming to get you. In your heart of hearts you know that for you to grow, you must release your grip on this present and well-known bar to move on to the new one. It will involve risking your present position, letting go of your identity for a moment and taking a leap of faith.
Each time it happens you hope that you won’t have to grab the new one. Oh, why cant I just stay the same you may say. But you also know that you are either growing or you are dying and the innate driver within tells you that growth is what you are here for.
No matter how many times you do it, each time, you are filled with apprehension. And that’s OK. That fear of the unknown is all encompassing. Each time you are afraid that you will miss, that you will be consumed by the chasm that exists between the bars. But you do it anyway because somehow, to keep holding on to that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives.
And so for what seems like an eternity you soar across the dark void of “the past gone, the future is not yet here.” It’s called transformation. You have come to believe that it is the only place where real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time your old buttons get pushed.
Your identity is created by your Quadrant preferences and firing off your ‘not me’ behaviours is a an easy way to confront the abyss of the unfamiliar. Every time you do this you create new pathways in your brain and wire yourself for new behaviours in the future.
For the next week, notice the ‘trapeze bar’ swinging towards you with your name on it and make a resolve to let go of your current limiting behaviour and grasp this new identity with both hands. Then continue on and read the next part to ‘Living in the Abyss’.
A Week Later …. Living in the Abyss!
Over the past week you will have noticed the ‘trapeze bar’ of things different swinging towards you with your name on it and I am sure that you made a resolve to let go of your current limiting behaviour and grasp and ride this new identity.
You probably noticed that your Quadrant preferences got a little uncomfortable when you fired off your ‘not me’ behaviours and based on our conversation last week I am sure that you know that you are creating new pathways in your brain and wiring yourself for new behaviours in the future.
The sign of mastery is when you rewire yourself by these means on the ‘fly’. It is when you can be vulnerable in the face of threat or adversity.
What do you do when you are working with people and they have an objection, a question, different perspective or viewpoint to you? Do you go onto your old safe patter of what you know or what they told you at college, or what the research says it should be – Or do you go into the void. That area of uncertainty, that area of unknowingness, the area where you can trust that transformation will occur if you open yourself up to the process?
Are you willing to ask questions and are you willing to not know? To not give advice and not come through with the definitive answer?
Are you willing to go into the space that that person occupies rather than in your own head.
It appears that in our culture, this transformation zone is looked upon as a “no-thing,” a no-place between places. Sure, the old trapeze bar was real, and the new one coming towards me I hope is real too. But, the void in between, that’s just scary, confusing, disorienting “nowhere” It must be got through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste!
It’s the space between the notes that makes the music. It’s the silence in a discussion that creates the emphasis.
What if the transformation zone is the only real thing and the bars are illusions, just noise. Things we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth occurs for us?
Whether this is true or not it remains that the transformation zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honoured, even savoured. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transformations, they are still the most alive, most growth filled passionate, expansive moments in our lives.
They are decision points. Where we decide to go back into our old patterns or they are times when we release ourselves to the new – to the change.
This week notice the decision points – those points where you decide to enter the silence, the void, the space between the notes.
